In my last post, Romantic Architecture, I discussed the fairly common “1-10 scale” that is used to rate a woman’s attractiveness. Lovelyleblanc7 left a comment in that thread, and I found this part particularly interesting:

But I realized this though, it is very hard for most women to figure out an honest answer of how attractive they are, especially if a lot of her peers are female or men who are afraid of being truthful. So, even though women can be picky, we think the men we desire are on our league, so to most women, it would be assortative mating.

As a man, I never gave serious thought to how women would rate themselves and each other. Part of me assumed that women could at least get a rough estimate. But after having read some comments and e-mails, and talking with some women I know, it seems that this isn’t the case at all. Apparently they are quite poor at rating their own attractiveness.

This shouldn’t have surprised me, really, but it did. And I don’t have a good excuse for it. How many posts and threads in the manosphere have discussed how women have completely unrealistic expectations these days? Hundreds at least. While the toxic hypergamy which infects the water supply in the West might be the cause of some of this, it can only work with what is already present. So it should have been obvious to me that women aren’t able, in most cases, to accurately place their own SMV value (which is what the 1-10 scale essentially represents).

One example of such a post is Sunshine Mary’s thread on assortive mating, which provided a set of possible reasons why women find men marriageable:

1. Due to their modern arrogance, they don’t find the men who are truly their assortive mating equivalents attractive now.

2. Many modern men are less attractive as husbands because, perceiving that they may not ever be able to marry a decent woman in our modern femininistic society, the men have lost the motivation to strive to do those things which make them attractive to women (improving their looks, athleticism, money, power, and status).

3. Feminism has given women a false sense of equality with men, making women believe that they don’t really need a husband; women don’t feel pressure to marry or stay married to less attractive men.

That first factor alone should have clued me in. While arrogance no doubt plays a part in it, there is probably something else as well- older women are no longer providing the kind of helpful advice that younger women desperately need. And part of that advice was probably telling those young women just what they were worth (as in, what kind of man they could ensnare… err, I mean marry). Maybe this didn’t translate into discerning a woman’s “number”, but it did give women an idea of what to shoot for. This advice is essentially gone now. So women are running wild, completely unaware of their SMV value (which is heavily determinative of their MMV).

All of this prompts me to ask this question:

Should a single woman looking to marry strive to find out her respective attractiveness on the 1-10 scale, in order to calibrate her relationship efforts towards men with whom she is roughly matched?

While I hope that my readers will provide their own answers, I have a few additional thoughts and answers related to this:

First off, a woman knowing her SMV value doesn’t necessarily help her direct her attention towards an equivalent male because, as I noted in the last post, discerning male SMV/MMV is rather difficult.

Second off, it isn’t necessarily easy for a woman to find out her “number.” It pretty much requires a brutally honest man whom she can trust to tell her the truth, and who is capable of analyzing her attractiveness in an objective manner. And even then she should get a number of opinions on this to average out the inevitable bias. If her view of her SMV is inaccurate, it could severely impair her efforts to find a mate. I know of at least one blogger who was the unfortunate recipient of a false report on her SMV, which caused her no small amount of distress for a long time.

My third and final thought is that assortive mating isn’t an exact science, either. There is a large subjective aspect to SMV and MMV, and that means a woman who thinks she is a 6 might erect an unnecessary ceiling of men she doesn’t consider for marriage, unaware that some men might rate her MMV higher than others.

And that wraps up this post. I encourage everyone to brutally rip apart my idea in the comments.

34 responses to “Should a Single Woman Know Where She Ranks on the “1-10 Scale”?”

First off, there’s also the much-mentioned impact of social media feeding women’s egos like nothing else previously (restrain the hounds, PC guardians – it happens to some men too).

2. Many modern men are less attractive as husbands because, perceiving that they may not ever be able to marry a decent woman in our modern femininistic society, the men have lost the motivation to strive to do those things which make them attractive to women (improving their looks, athleticism, money, power, and status).

In other words (to borrow from School Of Fish)…I think I lost myself
When I lost my motivation
Now I’m walking ’round the city
Just waiting to come to

…on a massive scale. Hence a life of video gaming and the occasional road trip looks like a solid plan for the future.*

And as has also been much-mentioned, men have been actively discouraged from doing things that would make them attractive to women.

3. Feminism has given women a false sense of equality with men, making women believe that they don’t really need a husband; women don’t feel pressure to marry or stay married to less attractive men.

Which loops back to number 2, in that this false sense of equality has raised the bar for a man to be considered attractive.

Should a single woman looking to marry strive to find out her respective attractiveness on the 1-10 scale, in order to calibrate her relationship efforts towards men with whom she is roughly matched?

Probably not. It’s just one more way of locking themselves into a box – instead of having a rather high floor of men they would consider, this just locks them into an artificial middle zone somewhere. To quote, “There is a large subjective aspect to SMV and MMV, and that means a woman who thinks she is a 6 might erect an unnecessary ceiling of men she doesn’t consider for marriage, unaware that some men might rate her MMV higher than others.”
_______________________________
*I have a small but sneaking suspicion that this may play some part in the phenomenon of “Bronies.” To quote a recent column by John Kass…

I could be wrong, but it doesn’t appear to me that the Brony ethos is about sex. It may be about something else, something profoundly more troubling…. young Americans ignorant of Aristotle and his list of virtues, perhaps cut off from organized religion, yet clearly seeking something more.

“I was just living day to day,” says a young man in the trailer for the documentary “Bronies: The Extremely Unexpected Adult Fans of My Little Pony.” “I didn’t really have anything to look forward to. As soon as ponies came into my life, I was like, wow, I didn’t want the day to end.”

This is what happens when a guy decides he’s probably never going to get a girl, and hasn’t had any masculine guidance, Bronies before honies, yo!

The context of the question is the answer. Is she trying to get married? If yes, she must know so as to make an honest assessment of her prospects. If no, then she may have her fun and flit about while she still has her youth.

How is a woman that does not know how she measures up supposed to calibrate her filters? How will she be able to make a suitable choice of the men who are her equivalents if she does not know which are which? How will she be able to select a assortative mate if she is unaware of where she falls?

There is a large subjective aspect to SMV and MMV, and that means a woman who thinks she is a 6 might erect an unnecessary ceiling of men she doesn’t consider for marriage, unaware that some men might rate her MMV higher than others.

Indeed, and she will spend her life suspicious of any man above that ceiling, expecting that he is “slumming” and trying to play her false, or that he is “settling” and will betray her at the least opportunity–for so she has been taught men will do.

And it is not beyond reason, for do not your pick-up artists do this openly and with pride?

there is some confusion here because men think women are primarily concerned with the looks with regard to what MEN think, but this is not true, women are concerned more with comparing themselves to other women based on what women think. when i was young i dont think i was even more than a 6.5-7 on my BEST day, but i got nearly endless attention from men that was ABSOLUTELY MEANINGLESS to me as i continued to consider myself ugly, gross, and abnormal looking. it is only now that i am older and the attention has dried up that i can look back and say “wow, i must have been something, all those men paid non-stop attention to me”. i existed to myself only as an icky satire of my more beautiful friends. i compared myself to them and found myself wanting, irrespective of what men thought. contrary to popular opinion, feminism has NEVER been about changing what MEN think, but about what WOMEN SAY they think, to other women ABOUT other women. all the campaigns to end judgmentalism about appearance are aimed at women not men, women dont even notice mens opinions or standards, women exist in a world devoid of male opinion and when they encounter it they find it to be a bizarre defective “immature” and “shallow” set of incomprehensible ideas.

I just included those factors from SSM because I didn’t want to cherry pick just a few lines from that post. The others besides point 1 aren’t really the topic of this post.

@ Hollenhund and TSK

While my mind is not necessarily made up, I am certainly inclined towards that view now (as if this post wasn’t an obvious enough indicator).

@ His Lordship

I wondered if you or your consort might chime in. Yes, there are serious problems with this, as you know. A compromise of sorts would be for a woman to not necessarily dismiss men “above her ceiling,” but not to chase them either. This really comes down to allocating resources (time being the most valuable), and she should focus hers on those men most likely to believe her a match.

@ Dana

Thank you for that intriguing comment. I must say, I never thought about it from that angle before. And yet it seems to make a lot of sense for many women…

If she is looking for marriage (which most women should be), is it necessary? I think the man should always pursue or make the first initiative and so, I would think it is OK for her to leave it up to him to do the assortative mating.
The problem with this though is that it could lead to dishonesty.
If a woman could get a truthful assessment (which would prove to be a challenge), I guess it could not hurt logistically, but emotionally though, I’m not sure all woman are eager to know.

“Should a single woman looking to marry strive to find out her respective attractiveness on the 1-10 scale, in order to calibrate her relationship efforts towards men with whom she is roughly matched?”

Probably not…because men have different ideas of what they consider attractive. One man’s 6 is another man’s 8.

But getting the highest number they can as far as what they can control and is universally accepted by men.

Normal weight, hair long, pleasant and suportive personality…will help them go a long way in getting that number as close to 10 as possible.

It would be the same for men if they tried to get a number…you’ll get all sorts of them, but you should be striving for masculinity to get the highest number you can.

That is the whole problem and that is what feminists are trying to do. For the longest while and still is, men have controlled the attractive 1-10 scale, not women. Women can say she is a 10 (and that is exactly what they have been trying to do with the obese acceptance culture–redefine beauty). As long as men say, “nope!”, then our opinions or redefinition of beauty really doesn’t matter…unless a women is a lesbian of course and this is what feminists are also trying to accomplish if they cannot accomplish the first.
Ever wonder why the photo of the over weight women had to have an abercrombie model with her because no matter how much women try, we still need male approval in terms of beauty acceptance.

In fairness, I think it’s often harder for women to ascertain their SMV level because of the type of feedback women get from men. Which is to say, a woman will receive sexual interest from lots and lots of men who will only be interested in her for a short term fling, because they see her as their best option at the moment.

Women, on the other hand, tend to give more honest feedback to men. No, not in the “I just want a nice guy/Be nice and be yourself” sense, but in the “If she wants to sleep with you then she really does like you” sense. Basically, if a guy can get a girl to sleep with him, then he can probably have her as a steady girlfriend too if that’s what he wants. (Or, if not her, at least a woman of comparable attractiveness.) His “level” will at least be equal to the “level” of the women he can get to sleep with him. Whereas a woman can find scores and scores of men who want to sleep with her who would have no other interest in her beyond immediate sexual gratification.

I don’t think your problem is looks; a woman knows if a man is attracted to her. Your problem is women don’t want to be married, do nothing to make themselves marrigeable, and have no social expectations or pressure to get married and stay married when young. So, they have a grand old time when they are young, and when they start to hit the wall, they desperately try to snag some chump that they won’t really be attracted to and will likely divorce later on. Relatedly, putting off childbearing essentially means fornication.

Women are not victims here, they are perpetrators. They know exactly what they are doing. They aren’t “making mistakes” or having trouble “understanding” SMP/MMP. They simply have different values. Many, perhaps most, would rather be a sister wife in a polygamous marriage to an “alpha” than settle for a “beta.” Women actively, openly, and with knowledge and foresight choose to engage in hookups. Why does everyone try to make it more complicated than it is?

I would think Christians would chalk it up to “sin nature” and be satisfied with that explanation.

Basically, if a guy can get a girl to sleep with him, then he can probably have her as a steady girlfriend too if that’s what he wants. … Whereas a woman can find scores and scores of men who want to sleep with her who would have no other interest in her beyond immediate sexual gratification.

This is the sort of thing that comes from believing that women are not sexually aggressive and promiscuous by nature. A man can find plenty of women that want to sleep with him but have no other interest in him beyond immediate sexual gratification.

It’s been said that women “mistake” sexual attraction/lust for love. Consider what that actually means. Women do not love men, they are simply sexually attracted to them.

Consider the lyrics to this song by K Flay, “The Cops.”

Even if the cops come calling
I’ll never talk
Even if you wreck me, even if you waste the youth I’ve got
Baby if the cops come calling
I’ll never talk

That is not love, that’s lust. It’s so much simpler than people are making it out to be. Think off all the old sayings about men and sex; men only think about one thing, men can only think with one head at a time, men are shallow and only care about a woman’s sexual attractiveness.

It’s almost completely the opposite. The crazy GBFM guy has it right; the ancients understood this about women. The Victorians switched the script and we’re still living with their purposefully deceptive ideals about women. Think about how much of a woman’s physical body is devoted to sex and reproduction. Then, think about how much of a man’s body is. Why is this so difficult for people to come to terms with?

While I certainly don’t claim to be a classicist and my knowledge in the area is superficial at best, I’ve heard that the homosexuality of ancient Greece and Rome is often quite overstated these days for political purposes. I have read the ancients debated whether or not women had souls.

Women tend to look to other women for validation of their self worth/looks/etc. It is the herd mentality to whatever is “in” whether it is short hair, sluttiness, etc if in a secular college atmosphere or whether it is modesty, feminine grace, longer hair, etc. if brought up in a small town Christian environment. Even if a woman is attracted to a man, she will shun him if enough of her social group think ill of him.

However, this herd mentality can be overridden by an alpha. If he is “alpha enough”, she will side with him even against her family and friends. It will end up being the “us against the world” mentality.

This is the base instinct and therefore hierarchy (e.g. hypergamy) of women’s valuation:

Alpha > Women > Beta

More specifically, she will value the attention/opinion/etc. of a man more highly than that of her friends if he has her respect AND the respect of her social clique.

Indeed, and she will spend her life suspicious of any man above that ceiling, expecting that he is “slumming” and trying to play her false, or that he is “settling” and will betray her at the least opportunity–for so she has been taught men will do.

Had I been walking around with a number in my head (twenty years ago I would have said ‘6’ of myself) I most likely would have fallen into that very trap when my husband came after me.

Better to just endeavor to be useful and virtuous while working to do the best you can with what your Maker gave you and not sweat it too much.

The problem, protagonist, is that we don’t know that female beauty distribution follows a bell curve. While it would seem like common sense that it would, that only makes sense if you curve the scale, rather than have an objective rating for reach number. Personally, I think the distribution favors more attractive women, not less.

@ Elspeth

A female “6” who works on her Girl game and bumps up her Marriage Market value can easily snag a higher quality man. For all but the most attractive men, 6 is above their attraction floor. The problem arises when a woman is a 6, and thinks she is a 4. Or when she thinks she is an 8, and she is in fact a 6.

I don’t know or frankly care at this point what my number is. Thankfully I came of age before the time when girls could just post selfies online and be lied to all day long (“You look hot!” “You’re gorgeous”! etc. etc.) To be honest, I know for sure that I always have been pretty enough for all normal purposes, to borrow the line from Our Town.

Today, I am pretty enough for my husband’s wife goggled eyes which means alot because he is not one to play games and shower me with delusions of grandeur. He’s just not built that way, not given to flattery.

I say this often (someone even snagged it from my old blog and wrote a post so entitled): Women should endeavor to be useful rather than just pretty. Do your best and leave it at that.

My point was that men are much more likely than women to “date down” for short term sexual gratification; ergo, a woman can sometimes get sex from men whose SMV is higher than that of the men who might actually commit to her. The reverse isn’t really the case — i.e., it’s not like men who can score really hot women for flings have to settle for plain or cute women for LTRs.

Okay, Lovely. I had a long tlak with my daughter yesterday in the car on this topic. Her take:

Frankly, I -her mother- have no idea how hard it is because I left the faith, married and unbeliever, and came back. She has a very close friend (also 19) who just did the exact same thing.

She loves both her parents of course, and loves her friend and her friend’s husband (we all know the boy from school), but she would really rather do this thing the right way. She knows that means she may have to wrap her mind around prolonged singleness. As an aside since we were discussing it: Her friend is Latina, the boy she married is white.

She’s using her dad as her point of refernece here so she’s biased, but she had a very clear and direct reason why men outside the church seem more “alpha” than men inside.

Men out there have spent a lifetime learning to fight (metaphorically). It’s them against the world and they know it so they have learned to be tough, not to take crap, and women feel safer with them, they know they’ll protect them.

Men raised in the church however (this is her opinion and I don’t fully agree), are raised to believe that it’s them and God against the world, that God will take care of them and fight their battles. Being aggressive or even assertive isn’t really acceptable. Women don’t feel like they are going to be taken care of by them and they’re not attracted to them. It’s instinct she says, not rational.

We talked about a lot more, but I found that interesting because I’ve never, ever talked about it before.

Oh, and she sugests that maybe the parents of all these like minded single bloggers need to set up a convention or something so the single Christian kids can meet. And send her an invite, LOL.

“Men raised in the church however (this is her opinion and I don’t fully agree), are raised to believe that it’s them and God against the world, that God will take care of them and fight their battles. Being aggressive or even assertive isn’t really acceptable. Women don’t feel like they are going to be taken care of by them and they’re not attracted to them. It’s instinct she says, not rational.”

It is sad to me that Christian men are seen as weak, when in reality learning to trust God is a far harder road than learning to trust yourself.

It’s interesting to me how much red pill truth use to be in music ( & movies).

Men who grow up in the church are weak. The church is for chicks. Probably has been sense the Templars were murdered over money. Personally I look to the way past when I need to figure out a moral issue or poroper masculine behavior. Hopefully I am the kind of man the would respect.